Examination of Witnesses (Questions 34-35)
ANN CLWYD
MP
TUESDAY 10 JUNE 2003
Q34 Chairman: Ann, we all know who
you are, but would you tell us for the record, and would you also
explain the mandate given to you by the Prime Minister?
Ann Clwyd: I am Ann Clwyd. I am
a member of this Committee, so it is very odd to be sitting here
looking at you all from this end. My particular mandate was to
look at the human rights situation. Obviously, I have had a very
long association with the Iraqi opposition and I am familiar with
the human rights abuses that have taken place over the years,
and in fact have been an active campaigner for action against
the regime over a long period of time. Can I say first of all
who I was accompanied by? Originally, someone from the Foreign
Office was to have accompanied me, but the day before I was told
it was too dangerous for the official from the Foreign Office
to go. I also had with me three members of INDICT, an organisation
which I chair, three researchers who over the past six years have
collected evidence on Iraqi war crimes. I took them along because
they have collected that evidence against ten leading members
of the regime, and they are also experienced in talking to victims
of the regime and taking detailed witness evidence from them which
might eventually be used in a future war crimes trial. I was also
accompanied by a friend who is an Iraqi Kurd, who obviously speaks
Kurdish and Arabic, and by a film cameraman to document what we
were doing. We first of all went to Kuwait to talk to the Kuwait
government about missing Kuwaiti prisoners because, of course,
there were 605 prisoners who were taken during the Gulf War, during
the attack on Kuwait, who have not been seen or heard of since.
The Kuwaiti government, both the Prime Minister of Kuwait and
the Foreign Minister, talked to us at some length about their
concerns. They have a team of forensic scientists in Kuwait looking
for the missing prisoners. I suspect none of them will be found
alive. In fact, there are various reports that Kuwaiti prisoners
have been found in certain mass graves. It has been slightly complicated
because Kuwait have offered a reward for information on the missing
Kuwaitis, and while we were there we obviously asked questions
about the Kuwaitis and whether anyone had information about them.
Security in Iraq is obviously a major concern for everybody, as
we have heard from the NGOs, and we found that right away. We
had to be escorted at the airport by the US military and also
by the Kurdish Peshmergas, who had agreed to provide security
throughout, because there is a shortage of people able to afford
that kind of security to visitors. I also chose to stay with Iraqis
so that I could better understand what their concerns were, and
so as to have more access to the Iraqi people themselves. In fact,
very good information was given to me by the Foreign Office, who
suggested that it was not a good idea to stay at ORHA because
of the difficulties of getting in and out, as has been apparent
in the evidence this afternoon. They are in Saddam's former palace,
and there are several road blocks on the way in. I do not know
how many passes have been issued in all, but I did not have a
pass, so I had to be accompanied by a member of the Kurdish leadership
who did have a pass. Sometimes this caused difficulties for us,
because we might go out on a visit somewhere, come back to what
is now the CPA—Coalition Provisional Authority—and
then not be able to exit from the building until the appropriate
person came to take us away from there, either somebody with a
pass who would come and fetch us or somebody from Close Protection
who could take us out of the building. It was a problem for everybody.
I must say the CPA are working under tremendous difficulties.
It is fair to make that point. Unfortunately, that is one of the
palaces that we targeted, and we took out the air conditioning.
People are working in that building sometimes in temperatures
of 104 degrees. There are a few fans about, but they work, sleep
and eat in that building, and they all complained about the feeling
that they were caged up and could not get out and meet people.
Everybody I talked to, both Iraqis and CPA people, said that law
and order was the most important issue. The Iraqis certainly do
not feel that the coalition forces in Baghdad are addressing those
concerns adequately. They criticised some of the US military.
This is anecdotal; I have no way of checking whether it is accurate
or not. These are stories told to us. On one occasion, US forces
shaved the heads of some Iraqis at a checkpoint. The incident
was reported at the time to the Australian Ambassador by the Iraqis.
Of course, shaving off hair is deeply insulting to the culture,
and was a technique used by the former regime, including Uday
Hussein, who ordered this to be done to athletes who under-performed.
With Iraqi Moslem women there was exactly the same problem that
we encountered in Afghanistan. It was said that Iraqi Moslem women
are sometimes searched by men. This problem has been raised with
the CPA and they are now putting more women out on the streets
to try and avoid this happening. Women raised a number of security
concerns with me, and I passed on those concerns to the CPA. There
are accounts that women are being raped, but of course, there
is no way of checking how those match with what happened under
the former regime because, of course, rape was an instrument used
by the former regime against women. It is difficult to decide
at this stage how serious that is. The CPA told us that there
was a general decrease in armed criminality, but there was a corresponding
increase in Ba'athist attacks. When talking about security, we
have to ask ourselves the question where have the former Republican
Guard gone? Where have the Fedayeen gone? The belief is that a
lot of those are actually stirring up dissent, in order, obviously,
to make the point that the country is more insecure than it was
before. We received some suggestions from the Iraqi people about
what they should do about it. They wanted to police themselves.
They wanted to appoint a "neighbourhood watch" with
radio links to the appropriate authority. There are thousands
of Kurdish Peshmerga and Shia resistance fighters who could, we
think, be utilised as special constables. The experiment was first
tried in Iraqi Kurdistan, after 1991, and it worked very well
there. There is no proper police force, but the police are coming
back. I do not know if the Committee has seen what the CPA put
out every day about progress under different headings, but they
are increasing the numbers of police. On the streets you see traffic
police, some in uniform and some in civilian clothes, because
all the traffic lights are on red; they do not work. There is
a lot of traffic on the streets, so either the police are there
or there are individuals who are helping to control the traffic.
When you go round the streets the feeling you
get is of normality, the kind of scenes that you see in every
capital city in the world: people going about their business,
people going to shops. We went to some of the markets in very
poor areas, and they seemed well stocked with fruit, vegetables,
eggs, and in a butcher's window a leg of lamb was hanging—I
do not know what the cost of these things was, but supplies looked
to be plentiful. Obviously, the vetting process to weed out Ba'athists
is continuing quite rapidly. I gave the example earlier on of
a visit I went on organised by the CPA and the DTI with Iraqi
women, who hopefully will take part in a conference at the end
of June or in July where there will be a women's tent and women
will participate in the process. There have been a lot of preliminary
meetings of the DTI which I have been to here in London, and this
is a continuation of it in the CPA headquarters. At the opening
session, a lot of women in the room were denouncing other women
who they said were Ba'athist. There was a huge row, which I heard
from outside the room before I was called in, but after a bit
everything seemed to settle down and people were participating
in the discussion on what the women should do. On the streets
of Baghdad, the infrastructure seems to have been remarkably preserved.
I toured around quite a lot and there is very little damage to
buildings that you can see, apart from government ministries,
some of the palaces, the communications centre, and the restaurant
where Saddam was last seen to be dining, which is about three
streets away from where I stayed and in which there has been considerable
activity in the last few days because they are taking all the
rubble away to the Baghdad Airport so they can sift it for DNA.
I have to say that there is a general feeling amongst Iraqis that
they do want to know what has happened to Saddam Hussain and his
sons; they want to know whether they are dead or alive. I stood
out on the street with the protection around me, and there was
absolutely no antagonism towards me at all. I had an interpreter.
They kept saying all the time, "Thanks to Bush and Blair."
This is no exaggeration; I heard it very often. Some people I
tried to speak to turned away and when I asked why, I was told,
"Because they think the Ba'ath are still watching them, and
if they speak to you, they may be denounced some time in the future
if the Ba'ath comes back." That is why I think it is very
important to know what has happened to the leadership of the regime
for the sake of the people's own feeling of well-being.
(The Committee suspended from 3.55
pm to 4.05 pm for a division in the House)
Q35 Chairman: Is there anything more
you would like to add before colleagues ask their questions?
Ann Clwyd: I have various headings
to go through. I want to give you an impression of what it felt
like to be in Baghdad. I found no antagonism whatsoever. They
were asking questions. The things that they complained about were
the things that any MP hears in any surgery in his or her constituency.
When I met groups of women, for instance, they always put security
as the number one issue. They then talked about not receiving
their pension—a woman with three children had not received
her pension—somebody else had not been able to return to
her place of work, somebody was worried about an electricity pylon
which had fallen and there were exposed wires, and they were afraid
children would be injured when the electricity was switched on.
They were the kinds of things that all of us are used to hearing
complaints about. The electricity supply is almost as good now
as it was under the regime, and sometimes better. There was no
shortage of water where we were, and I did not hear any complaints
about shortage of water, although it was not always safe to drink,
but then, access to safe drinking water was not a luxury that
most of the people of Iraq enjoyed before. On the mass graves,
as one Iraqi friend said to me, "The whole of Iraq is a mass
grave." The mass graves are being discovered almost daily
now. Quite often, people knew the graves might be there but had
never dared go anywhere near them. Obviously, now they are going,
and I have a list I received while I was there, the latest one
issued by the Kurdistan regional government, of 56 mass graves.
I will pass these papers over to the Committee[1].
They give details such as, for example, number 1, a mass grave
in Al Hilla; there are about 15,000 victims in it. Then near the
Abu Ghraib prison there are thousands of political prisoners buried,
and so on. They list the possibilities. Some of that information
is obviously gleaned from newspapers, and those graves have not
yet been excavated. One of the things we were trying to impress
upon people was the importance of preserving the evidence contained
in those mass graves, because obviously, what is found there,
if exhumed properly by archaeologists and anthropologists and
forensic scientists, can be pieced together and is information
that might be used in future war crimes trials. We went to the
biggest, which is near Babylon in Al Hilla. They have already
taken about 3,000 bodies out, and they think there could be between
10,000-15,000 buried there. These are Shia Iraqis who were probably
executed after the uprising following the Gulf War in 1991. The
bodies which had been excavated but not identified were put back
in graves, with on top of them plastic bags containing what was
found with the body in the grave. Sometimes it was a watch, sometimes
a pen, sometimes an identity card. The forensic scientists were
looking at buttons, pieces of cloth, fingers, skulls, bits of
spine. They were examining this carefully on the ground. One of
the saddest things was 1,000 bodies which had been excavated and
not identified, re-buried, with these plastic bags on top of them.
There was an elderly woman wandering around, looking in the plastic
bags, and she was looking for evidence that her son was one of
the bodies. She was taking out the plastic ID card, but she could
not read so somebody had to come and help her. That was a simple
thing which could be put right. Somebody should read those cards
in advance and spare her the trauma of looking for a body. The
CPA are trying to train local people, are trying to get forensic
scientists in, and talking to religious leaders about the way
they protect the graves and how important it is that the bodies
are taken out in the right way. Obviously, there are not enough
people available at the moment to do that job. That is also a
gap between the CPA's intention and the reality. We visited Kurdistan
a few days later and talked to the Human Rights Minister there.
The Kurds have been excavating those graves for some time, but
he did not know there was any overall plan for Iraq; nobody at
the CPA had communicated with the Kurdish Minister for Human Rights
or with the Kurdistan government, yet they have compiled this
list of 56 sites. So it is important to get that co-ordination
in place very quickly because, apart from the destruction of evidence,
mis-identification is also possible. We went to one grave near
Kirkuk, and this is, I am afraid, typical of what is happening.
There was a mass of clouds of earth in the air as you approach
the site, and there were bulldozers at work taking the bodies
out. We spoke to a Kurdish military commander from the PUK who
had seen his men executed in 1991, and 12 of the bodies that had
been taken out of the earth that day and laid in open coffins
were the skeletons of the men that he used to command. One of
them was his best friend. There were elderly men standing by who
had lost family. One man had lost five sons, another man had lost
two sons. He identified his son as one of the bodies taken out
of the grave by the gold ring on his hand. The kind of excavation
that was going on was not the careful excavation that is actually
needed. The other thing is the loss of documents. There are plans
in the CPA to set up evidence repository centres, but a lot of
documentation has been lost already, as we all know. A great deal
is still lying around uncollected, and the only people, it seems
to me, doing any form of analysis are actually Iraqi volunteers.
They have no resources, and their system concentrates on identification
of victims rather than gathering of evidence, so from a legal
perspective it will be of limited value because of the way it
is being done at present. There was evidence given to us of documents
containing evidence because as you know, the Iraqi regime, like
the Khmer Rouge and the Nazis, kept very careful accounts of everything
they did. Documents are on sale in the market and Ba'ath party
people are buying them up, and it is obvious why that is happening:
they want to destroy the evidence before it becomes of any use
to people who might want to prosecute them. CPA staff have told
us they hoped to have developed an initial strategic plan for
criminal investigation within the next few days. I think it is
important that war crimes investigations are given some priority,
and that personnel, political instructions and resources should
be allocated. There are two places I would like to mention. I
asked to go to the Abu Ghraib prison. The Abu Ghraib prison was
the largest prison. The numbers of people who were supposed to
be there varied a great deal, and I think the estimate varies
from 30,000 to something like 75,000 people held in that one prison.
When you consider that the prison population of this country totals
about 73,000, it gives you some idea of the possible scale of
this particular prison. It reminded me of some of the Nazi concentration
camps I have been to in the past, the scale and the locality,
out in the country. There are rings of cells inside and outside
the prison. It had been looted, like everything else. However,
inside, some of the cells had been freshly painted. Apparently,
before the Iraqi regime left, they painted some of the cells.
They had not entirely painted everything out, because you see
lines from the Koran on some of the cell walls, and you see names
of prisoners and the dates when they were in the prison. The last
date we saw was 2001. The day before the Americans came, apparently,
the last prisoner there was disposed of. The killing of the prisoners
left at that prison went on for several weeks beforehand. There
were some young boys standing outside aged about 15, and we talked
to them while we were trying to get into the prison. Some of them
had been prison guards, and they described the methods of execution
and how people were put in trenches up to their waists and shot
through the head. We saw the execution chamber, with ramps, with
hooks, with pulleys. There were levers that were pulled and people
were dropped into pits below. Apparently, it is said, sometimes
they did not die, and somebody stood on their necks to make sure
the neck broke. Most of the people in the surrounding area of
the Abu Ghraib Prison actually worked there. It was like some
isolated psychiatric hospitals we have had in the UK in the past,
where all the surrounding area had a job somewhere inside that
hospital. The same was true of this prison. There is still a lot
of evidence to be collected. There were papers all over the floor.
There was a book of hospital records which we just picked up.
There were rolls of film that we picked up. We spoke to the American
commander of the prison and impressed upon him how important it
was that somebody scooped up all the documents, put them in a
plastic bag and put them somewhere safe, because you could actually
see people's names and methods of execution. We think some of
the patients were experimented on as well and those documents
will be somewhere. By the way, there were murals of Saddam everywhere
around the prison: Saddam with a hawk on his shoulder; Saddam
with a dove inside a cannon; Saddam in a silk suit smoking a cigar.
A lot of his face has been defaced. People had actually shot the
face when they went into the prison originally, but the murals
are still there and I think they continue to show his vanity.
We went to see a prisoners' group on the last day, which we were
told about by one of the television employees, and was about a
50-minute drive across Baghdad. Outside there were queues of people
on the pavement, elderly men and women standing there in the hot
sun waiting to get into the building. They all wanted information
from the documents held inside the building. The man in charge
was an ex-prisoner—in fact, everybody in the building, working
in the building for free, were ex-prisoners—who had been
arrested eight times and on the last occasion he had his toe nails
removed. He was somebody who, the last time he was sent a message
to go back to the police, did not go, he just disappeared. People
inside were just so distressed, when they were grabbing at my
arm they were sobbing. They just wanted to know about their sons,
their husbands, their brothers; they wanted information. There
were three computers which had been given to the people inside
there. I think it is the kind of project that needs instant help,
because in two weeks of working inside that house they had fed
150,000 names into the computer from documents that had been picked
up. Every room in the house was full of documents, but they were
thrown all over the place and they had not had time to go through
them. Also, there were letters giving instructions for executions
signed and countersigned by people working for the regime. That
is the kind of thing they were not feeding into the computers
because they were saying: "We are not putting those in because
we do not want any arbitrary killings. We do not want people to
go after these people, we want it done in the proper way".
Lastly, Chairman, if you will forgive me, I do just want to show
you the kind of thing which you can get in evidence. This was
a man who was a lecturer at Basra University and this was one
of the photographs that the ex-prisoners had picked up. It is
a man who is still alive, his arm has already been amputated and
there are other horrible injuries to his body. Obviously, he is
now dead, but they know his name and there are lots of similar
photographs, so the documentation is very important.
The Committee suspended from 4.24 pm to
4.33 pm for a division in the House.
Chairman: Whilst we are still on the
record and we have got a quorum, I think the fair way is for us
to adjourn the session with Ann Clwyd and reconvene at a time
to be arranged, because I suspect there will be colleagues on
the Committee who would like to ask her questions. Thank you.
1 Not printed. Copy placed in the Library. Back
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